Why do so many women loathe their looks?

Did anyone watch that programme with Sherrie Hewson that was on the other night?  She took part in this experiment whereby she and 100 women were given a clicker and each time they had a negative thought about their physical appearance or self in general, they had to click. When the results came through I found them to be particularly disturbing. On average each woman made 252 clicks a week, so that makes 36 a day. Sherrie herself made 'only' a staggering 1,400 clicks and she thought this was good! 

The show was particularly concentrating on how women feel as they get older. It was pointing out another criteria the average woman must fulfill. Not only are we meant to successfully juggle children, be wives, have a  full-time job, do housework, be a lady in the street and a freak in the bed etc - we must also perform a miracle! To stop the ageing process!!!!

What the hell else are they gonna come up with? Now we aren't even allowed to grow older?? This constant pressure on older women to aspire to look younger drives me mad! On top of everything we aren't even allowed our right to grow old? It's sickening.  I've always maintained that when my hair turns grey there's no way I'm dyeing it. I'm embracing old age all the way. It's a part of life, surely there is beauty in the ageing process? And I don't only mean physical. Am I the only person that sees this? Mind you if women were happy with how they looked then massive cosmetic companies and fashion houses wouldn't make any money would they. MEOW!

Mind you I'm only 24 so wait until I'm 59 and maybe I'll fall to the pressure. I already fall to the pressure, I look at my stomach in the mirror everyday and wish it was as flat as Cheryl Cole's. 

Even though the show was really interesting the ending bugged me. It ended up with Sherrie saying 'so we really must find out why women feel so bad about themselves.'

What?

I like you very much Sherrie but open your bloody eyes! It doesn't take a genius to figure it out! Just leave your house!! It'll take you five minutes until you see an advert somewhere of some hot naked airbrushed beauty advertising windows (I actually saw this ad on wednesday in Eastbourne, I shit you not, I want to go back and take a photo of it) to make you want to press your clicker with gusto! THIS was the point I made in a blog a couple of months ago - we're so blind to these images we don't even notice the subconscious affect they're having on us. 

Just leave us women alone, let us get older, let us have flab and stop using our arses and tits and deliberately creating insecurities in us to sell your products.

Ahem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1230089/Why-DO-women-loathe-looks-asks-Loose-Womens-Sherrie-Hewson.html

p.s. I think the campaign from the programme was called 'think it, click it' but when I googled this nothing came up so if anyone else knows can you let me know, I would be fascinated to find out more about it.

Page three girl

See a video of my Page Three rebellion today! 

The piece is highlighting the absolute absurdity of it. My fake breasts are no more ridiculous than the notion that we allow and accept a woman with her breasts out on the page three of a national newspaper. What message does this send us about our attitudes towards women? And will this tradition ever be stopped? Doubt it!

Taking on Page Three 17/11/09 - next tuesday!!

PRESS RELEASE

Controversial Brit artist seizes control of page three on its 40 year anniversary. 

Londoners on their lunch break will be staring at joke tits on the 17th November thanks to controversial British artist Sarah Maple, who rose to fame after winning the Saatchi art prize in 2007. 

1,000 limited edition prints of her new photographic piece ‘Page Three Girl’ will be smuggled into copies of The Sun by Maple and her team of art ninjas. Maple, bemused as to why Britain still holds ‘Page 3’ to its bosom, decided to tackle the tradition head on. Before the early morning rush hour the art works will be secretly circulated in newsagents across London. 

Maple states “me getting fake breasts out on page three is no more ridiculous than a woman with her ACTUAL breasts out” 

Maple’s motivation for this work arose from the commonly lauded declaration that as a society we are in a state of post feminism. With the increase of Zoo and Nuts magazines, page three, and the eagerness of young girls to strip for fame, it is evident that progressive thinking on feminism is in fact as artificial as the breasts and bodies that allegedly epitomise it. As feminists reclaimed language and culture in the sixties and seventies, so too has the glamour industry reclaimed the female form for opposite ends, revealing, as Maple says, that ‘we are going backwards not forwards’. 

“There is too much emphasis on sex used in advertising. We are apparently exposed to 30,000 adverts everyday and I believe this has a conscious and subconscious affect on all of us.” 

Maple reclaims these images, by playfully sending up the process of ‘feminism’ these images claim to have. By creating an absurd and slightly grotesque version of what we habitually accept, Maple forces us to think and challenge this notion of women to both sexes. 

Sarah Maple completed a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University in 2007, and now lives in her native Sussex. In the same year she also won the ‘4 Sensations’ competition for emerging artists, run by Charles Saatchi and Channel 4. Maple’s work has been featured as the cover and content of US art/fashion magazine Swindle, and Nylon magazine. Her work has been displayed on the London Tube as advertising art space and has been exhibited in New York, Ireland, and throughout Britain. 

look out for the above print!

Who wore it best?

This is a small tease from my new photographic series 'Who wore it best?'

It's in reference to all those things you can vote on in magazines to say which celeb wore the best frock.

Again this is anti-feminism by pitting women against each other. Check it out!

Example of 'who wore it best?' in magazines.